by Mark Dawson
Milton started to walk across to them.
“Stay where you are!”
“What are you going to do when you’ve shot her?”
Milton held his aim steady. He had two choices: Chandler was standing in the open, an easy shot, but taking him out now would probably spook Callow into firing. He couldn’t risk it. The second choice, the harder choice, was to take the shot at Callow.
Mallory was slight, much smaller than the man behind her, and she only offered a partial shield for him to hide behind. Milton had a good view of part of his head, his right shoulder, and his right leg. He was fifteen feet away, the light was poor, and the rain was in his eyes.
None of those factors helped his accuracy.
He assessed.
Sixty percent. He would make the shot more times than he missed it.
He held his arm steady and adjusted his aim.
Callow was panicking now. He pulled Mallory closer to his chest and started to back away to the trees.
“I’m not bluffing.”
Milton breathed: in and out, in and out.
“Drop that fucking gun!”
Milton’s finger tightened around the trigger.
CRACK.
The bullet struck him in the left arm just as he heard the report of the rifle from behind him. The impact sent him stumbling forward two paces, his gun arm jerking up for balance and his right hand opening involuntarily, dropping the gun. Pain raced up his arm and into his shoulder, a great bellow of it that dropped him down to the ground just as a second shot whistled above his head. His instincts took over and, ignoring the shriek of agony, he rolled away to his right. A third shot slammed into the earth just ahead of him, throwing muddy sod into his face. He scrambled for grip, his boots sliding on wet grass as he pushed off and threw himself behind the RV, out of sight of whoever it was who had shot at him from the other side of the hollow.
Callow was on the same side of the RV as he was, though.
He shoved Mallory away from him, took aim, and fired.
Milton ducked.
The window above him shattered, glass falling down onto him.
He ran to the driver’s door, praying it was unlocked.
If it wasn’t, Callow was going to have a clear shot at him.
MICHAEL CALLOW aimed and fired, but he was too hyped up, and the shot went high again, popping the window of the door as Milton yanked it open. He forced himself to draw a deep breath and took aim for a third time, but Milton hurled himself inside the open driver’s door and shut it again before he could get the shot off.
“Fuck!”
He looked back up the slope beyond their pickup and saw a figure jogging down the hill at them. He passed through the headlights, and Callow saw that it was his father, a rifle in his arms, the muzzle pointing forwards.
Mallory was on the grass, trying to get to her feet. Chandler intercepted her, wrapped her in his arms, and hauled her off the ground and away to the side.
Michael’s eyes were drawn to the two bodies on the ground. Eric was still. Reggie’s leg twitched, up and down, up and down. They were dead or as good as dead. Milton had taken them out.
Milton.
He swung the gun back to the RV, trying to remember how many times he had fired and how many shots were left in the magazine.
“Where is he?” his father yelled out over the drumbeat of the rain. Michael realised that the old man wouldn’t have been able to see as Milton had thrown himself inside.
“In there.”
“Did I hit him?”
“In the arm.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Dammit, Michael.”
Callow grit his teeth in frustration. “I was—”
“Keep him penned in,” Lundquist shouted out. “I’ve got this side.”
Callow pounded his fist against his thigh. All he wanted to do was impress the old man, but whatever he did, it seemed he always fell short.
“Leland, Morris is parked at the top. Go and help him bring Flowers down here and get a rifle from the van while you’re at it.”
“What about him?” he said, pointing at Arthur.
“Chandler, if that boy moves, you shoot his sister and then you shoot him.”
“Mallory!” Arthur cried out.
“Don’t move, Arty,” the girl called back. “Do as they say, you understand?”
Michael flicked his eyes to the side again and watched as his father walked slowly down the final slope into the bowl of the hollow. He had the rifle raised now, pointing at the RV.
“Milton,” he yelled out. “You’ve got nowhere to go. You hear me? Come out and get this over with. Maybe the girl and her brother don’t need to get hurt.”
Michael gripped his pistol tight. He took a step forwards and took dead aim at the open doorway. If Milton came out that way, he was going to plug him.
“Milton!” his father called out again.
The voice that answered from inside the RV was muffled, but still distinct enough. “I’ve got a shotgun. You touch either of them, and I swear to God, I’ll do to all of you what I just did to Sellar and Sturgess.”
“He’s bluffing!” Michael yelled. “He ain’t got shit in there.”
“You sure about that?” his father said.
“I didn’t see no shotgun.”
“But are you sure?”
“I’m not sure—”
“Christ, Michael.”
Callow saw Morris Finch and Leland Mulligan coming down the slope. There was a third figure between them, head lolling between her shoulder blades and her legs dragging behind her as they hauled her along. Looked like the FBI bitch had taken a bit of a beating. Michael grinned at the thought of that, remembering her attitude as she and Milton had shepherded them through the forest and back to Truth. She didn’t have that same attitude right now, did she? Her and Milton, both of them, they were going to be sorry that they had put their noses into the militia’s affairs.
Chapter 22
MILTON PRESSED himself against the foot of the sofa bed that took up one wall of the RV’s salon.
There was no shotgun. He didn’t even have the cop’s pistol.
He had heard Michael Callow, and he was right: he was bluffing.
He was breathing heavily, and every beat of his heart sent a fresh pulse of pain through his body. He took off his jacket, biting his lip as he withdrew his left arm from the sleeve. He looked down at the wound. The sleeve of his sweater was already soaked through with blood, and he could feel the warm stickiness of it as it slid down his ribs to his belt. He had been lucky: his arm had been at his side and, if the bullet had hit just ten inches to the right, it would have punched through his lung. That would have been that.
“Milton,” Morten Lundquist barked out again, “you’re done for, and you know it. Come out, or we’ll shoot that RV up so bad it’ll look like Swiss fucking cheese, you hear me?”
Milton reached up and back until his fingers had wrapped around the curtain. He yanked hard, dragging it off its hooks and gathering it in his lap. He tore the fabric down the middle, wrapped it around his arm, and knotted it as hard as he could. The beige material spotted with blood at once. He held his arm up above his head and reached around with his right hand, his fingers settling on the pressure point and squeezing, trying to restrict the flow of blood. He wouldn’t be able to staunch the bleeding, but maybe he could slow it down until he could treat it properly.
“Milton! I’m going to count to five.”
“You can count to a hundred if you like, Lundquist, it’d make no difference.”
“You’re hit, and you don’t have a weapon.”
“You sure about that?”
“Aw, shit. Take him out!”
Milton covered his head with his right arm as the sound of concentrated gunfire tore up the night. Rounds sliced through the flimsy walls of the RV, perforating the metal and passing through into the night beyond.
He heard Lu
ndquist bark out, and the barrage ceased. Milton scrambled forwards, grabbed the flex that led to the lamp and yanked it out of the wall, plunging the salon into darkness. He knew of two sure ways into and out of the RV: the open door to the side, facing where Lundquist must be, and the closed driver’s door that he had used to get inside. He added the closed passenger side door, hoping it was locked, and, perhaps, another one at the back. He had to cover all of them.
“Fire!”
The gunfire started up again, a roaring blaze of noise.
“That’s enough.”
Someone kept firing.
“I said hold your fire!”
It stopped.
How many shooters?
Milton thought he could detect four different weapons: two rifles and two pistols, but that was little more than a guess. He could be wrong about that.
Lundquist called out again. “You’re outnumbered.”
“Why don’t you come in here and we’ll see about that.”
“There are five of us out here, friend. You’re not going anywhere.”
Five: useful information.
Michael Callow, Tom Chandler, Lundquist, and the cop. Who was the fifth?
“And you’re hit, right? I winged you in the arm. I’ll bet you’re losing blood right now. How long you think it’ll take for you to bleed out?”
The light of a flashlight glared through the window and up onto the ceiling of the Winnebago, swinging left and right above his head. Another beam joined it, sweeping in through the open doorway in the side of the Winnebago. Milton shuffled away from it.
“We’ve got your friend from the FBI.”
“She’s not my friend.”
“You want to see her get shot?”
Milton pressed himself against the wall and scoured the inside of the RV for something, anything, that he could use.
A gun, he thought. Mallory said that her father was into guns.
“That’s not clever,” Milton said, stalling them. “If she doesn’t check in with her partner, you’ll bring the whole bureau up here. What are you going to do then?”
Where would she have put them?
“We’re going to pin it all on you, friend. You came into town, and you caused trouble right from the start. The sheriff sent you on your way, and you didn’t like it. You came back and had a brawl in the bar. Plenty of witnesses to that. You got arrested; the sheriff let you out after you cooled off, only you hadn’t cooled off, you came back with a gun and took out the sheriff, the FBI lady when she tried to help him, and those two poor kids who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Where were they?
There were slide-out drawers beneath the seats in the salon, and he could get to them without getting to his feet. He kept one eye on the open door and slid across to them, opening them, yanking them off their runners, upturning them. Papers, magazines, clothes, shoes, but no weapon.
“Come on, Pops,” Callow said.
“Easy,” Lundquist said.
“The fuck are we waiting for?”
Pops? He was Lundquist’s son?
“Stand down, Private.”
Milton prodded. “I warned you not to cross me, Callow. This isn’t going to end well for you. Any of you.”
He heard the familiar sear of anger as he replied, “You forget where you are and where we are? You’re finished.”
“Don’t let him rile you up. All he’s got left are words.”
Milton looked down the darkened corridor to the bedroom door. She must keep them in there, he thought. A lockbox beneath the bed or hidden at the back of the wardrobe. Somewhere Arty wouldn’t find them. There was no way he could get down there to look. He would have to pass the open door, and he was prepared to bet everything he had on the fact that they had at least a couple of their guns trained on the dark space. As soon as they saw any sort of movement, they’d empty their magazines at it. He was trapped in this half of the RV.
“Come out, friend. We’ll do you quick and easy if you play nice.”
“I don’t think so. First person who puts his head in that door gets it shot off.”
He looked up. There were cupboards attached to the walls, but they were above the wide, open window and there was no way he could get to them without presenting them with an open invitation to pump a dozen rounds into his chest.
“Get your ass out here right now,” Lundquist said, his voice hardening.
“We’ve got a stalemate, Lundquist.”
“We ain’t got shit. Show him, Private Chandler.”
There came the deeper, more powerful boom of a shotgun, the echo of the blast, the sound of it being pumped, and then a second boom. The spread was fired at reasonably close range, and the buckshot peppered the thin metal walls, dozens of tiny piercings that appeared just a few inches above his head. The openings admitted tiny splinters of light from the flashlights outside.
If the next shot was aimed lower, he’d catch the buckshot in his head and shoulders.
LUNDQUIST LOOKED at the coil of smoke that was unwinding from the muzzle of the rifle. He had been in a situation like this, years ago, in Vietnam. Another world. Another war about nothing, the government sending poor boys to die. Boys without an earthly idea what they were doing. They were doing it again, now, just the same. Gooks then, ragheads now. He remembered all the way back, damned near forty years, and how it had been raining then, too, the monsoon, raining for a week on end with no let up.
He remembered.
The foxhole, the VC outside.
He couldn’t forget.
That was where it had started. His hatred of the government, it had fomented there.
Damned if he was going to let this godforsaken Limey throw a wrench into what God had told him to do.
“The girl,” Lundquist called. “Bring her over here.”
Morris Finch and Leland Mulligan dragged her across until she was in front of him.
“On the ground.”
Lundquist watched as the two men dumped Flowers in the mud before him. She pushed herself out of the muck and onto her knees. He looked down at her. She couldn’t have been more than thirty, and maybe she was even younger than that. Scrawny. She had put up a fight, and there had been no choice but to knock her around pretty good. Her right eye was puffed up, and blood was crusting beneath her nose. It had been a bad day for her already.
About to get worse.
“Milton!”
Lundquist looked back at the RV, its flanks peppered with bullet holes and studded with buckshot.
No reply.
“You got until I count to five, and then Agent Flowers is going to get badly hurt.”
Nothing.
“One.”
Just the sound of the rain.
“Two.”
The rain, beating on the roof of the Winnebago, drumming on the brim of his hat.
“Three.”
Morris Finch looked over at him with sudden concern.
“Four.”
He reversed the rifle, holding it by the muzzle and the receiver.
“Five.”
He swung the rifle like a bat, the stock catching her on the side of the temple and knocking her out cold. She was unconscious before she fell sideways, landing with a wet slap.
“You did that, Milton,” he called out. “I didn’t want to hurt her. That was your doing. It’s on you.”
Nothing.
“You don’t come out of there with your hands up, Milton, the next thing I do, I promise you, someone’s not waking up.”
When Milton called back, his voice was cool and even. “I’m going to kill you, Lundquist. I’m going to kill you and every one of you out there. No one escapes. That’s a promise. You can take it to the bank.”
Lundquist felt a shiver pass up his spine, but he knew the others were watching him, taking their lead from his example. He was their commanding officer, and he dare not show any weakness. Instead, he set his jaw and looked over at Leland. “Bring hi
m over here,” he said, pointing at Arthur Stanton.
Mallory screamed out.
Leland hauled him across, kicking him in the back of the legs so that he fell to his knees.
Lundquist held the muzzle against the boy’s head.
“Your call, Milton. You want this on your conscience? It’s up to you.”
MILTON CLOSED his eyes and tried to think around the pain. He had heard Lundquist strike Ellie, and he knew that he wasn’t bluffing about what he was going to do next.
No doubt about it: Lundquist was in it up to his neck now. He had started to kill, and the only way to see himself clear was to keep on killing. He had nothing to lose. Milton didn’t doubt that he had hit her. He didn’t doubt that he would kill her, too, if he thought that was what needed to be done. He didn’t doubt that he would kill all of them.
Milton opened his eyes, looked down at the bloody fabric knotted around his bicep, and knew that he had to get out.
There was nothing he could do for Ellie, Mallory, or Arty.
He was trapped.
He had no weapon, and he was surrounded by men who did. The second they saw him, they would put a dozen rounds into him.
He couldn’t help anyone if he was dead.
Maybe there would be nothing he could do for them.
Maybe they had just struck a rich seam of bad luck.
But if he could get away himself, maybe they would take them somewhere.
Maybe he could come back and help them.
A lot of maybes.
One certainty.
One thing for definite.
He would keep to his word.
He would murder every last one of them.
He grimaced from the effort of propping himself back against the seat. He looked around with fresh eyes, not searching for a weapon, but for a means to escape.
And then he saw it and knew what he had to do.
“Ellie,” he yelled out. “Mallory! Keep it together. I won’t forget about you.”
“Milton!” the girl called out.
“Get out of the RV,” Lundquist ordered, his voice tight with tension.
Milton crawled on his belly to the front of the RV as another fusillade stitched across the panel to his right, the bullets passing through it easily, leaving jagged blooms of metal in their wake. Rounds ricocheted, pots and pans were struck, ringing out as they toppled from their shelves and thudded against the carpeted floor. A digital clock on the wall was blown off its hook, spinning to the floor and smashing into pieces. A framed picture of Mallory and Arty fell onto him.
